


love, actually (or, six christmases)

by sidnihoudini



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-14
Updated: 2008-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"All I'm saying is," He tells her, inching past her through the doorway. "Stop acting like a five year old who didn't get what she wanted."</p><p>She snaps on him, totally wigs out and throws her silver clutch at the back of his head.</p><p>So fifteen minutes later, he's sitting alone by himself on Christmas Eve, as usual, in his bathroom, on the closed toilet lid with a wad of tissue pressed against the back of his bleeding head. Which is new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love, actually (or, six christmases)

Christmas, 2016

He's in Chicago, sitting at the very edge of his hotel bed as he watches the original Frosty cartoon on one of the higher cable channels. His plate from room service is sitting on the table in front of him, half eaten with the remainders cold, and the entire room is about three degrees too hot to actually be comfortable.

David's phone rings when he's thinking about these things.

"Hello?" He answers, feeling a little detached at the fact that he's by himself on Christmas Eve. Again.

But then Cook is talking on the line, and David can hear the smile in his voice as he asks, "What did the cow say on Christmas morning?"

"Cook," David laughs, leaning forward, palming a warm hand to his forehead. "Oh man, I didn't think you were gonna call. I uh, I dunno really..."

Laughing before he even manages to get the answer out, Cook says, "Moo-ey Christmas!"

"Oh," David kind of chuckles, only because of the way Cook sounds now, completely satisfied with the content of his joke. "Oh, that's kind of funny."

Cook makes some loud noise that he only makes when he's really excited, and shouts, "Kind of? It's awesome!"

"Where are you?" David asks, resting his chin on one hand. He watches the TV with one eye. This special totally reminds him of home, and his mom.

Making a little 'ehh' noise, Cook answers, "I'm listening to Judy Garland and Percy Sledge, as you do on Christmas Eve."

"Oh man," David laughs under his breath, rubbing his eyes with one hand. "What, are you at home? Or are you still stuck at the studio?"

Actually it sounds like Cook is walking around outside, David can hear the rush of cool wind and cars shooting by.

"You ask too many questions, kid," Cook answers, even though they're both more aware now than ever that David isn't a kid anymore.

David rolls his eyes anyways, and lays back against the mattress as Frosty goes to commercial. Both of his legs hang off the end. "Too bad you never answer any of them."

"Getting feisty in your old age, huh," Cook laughs again, sounding a little out of breath. So he doesn't have the greatest stamina of anyone David has ever met. "I'm just walking home now. Went out to get a drink with one of my buddies."

Nodding up at the ceiling, David pulls one leg up and listens as Cook pulls a door open and that telltale whoosh of warm air hitting cold. Then there's the sound of Cook laughing quietly as he tries to shake the snow out of his jacket.

"Hey, I thought it was raining in New York," David says, pushing himself up onto one elbow.

Cook just laughs again and David can hear him walking, both the footsteps against the ground and the added huff to his breath.

"Cook," David says, when he doesn't bother to give a reply. David pushes himself up until he's sitting again. He can feel his pulse jump and his heart thump. "I just watched the weather forecast and it's totally not snowing where you are."

Cook is still laughing, which means he's definitely, definitely lying, and then there's a knock on his hotel room door.

"Oh man, what is that? You should totally go answer that," Cook tells him, and damned if David can't hear his voice coming right through the door.

David gets up off the bed and starts over to the door, phone still pressed to one ear.

Cook is still laughing into his phone when David swings the door open and finds Cook standing there, looking about ten miles past proud of himself.

"Merry Christmas, huh?" He greets, standing there in his thick winter jacket, covered in melting snowflakes. David's mouth drops open.

Cook closes his phone and, laughing like crazy, wraps David up in both arms.

 

\---

 

Christmas, 2014

"No way." Cook tries to close the front door before the guy standing outside of it even gets a word in edgewise.

David makes a noise that is halfway between a 'no!' and 'ngghll!', but manages to get enough of his body in-between the door and frame that it would make Cook feel a little bad for crushing him.

"Get out. Seriously, go away, go back to wherever you came from, man," Cook keeps telling him, even though he does ease up on the door a little bit.

Shaking his head stubbornly, David, red-cheeked and totally out of breath, holds up one gloved hand, and tries to regain his footing. Cook knows his stoop is icy but all of this is really uncalled for.

"I can't, ugh." David bends over and rests his hands against his knees, taking a few deep breaths. He stands up and waves one arm around for emphasis as he explains, "I ran all the way here. From where the uh, cab dropped me off on fifth, I mean. Not from the airport, that would be impossible."

Cook frowns and thinks about closing the door in his face right then. "What the hell are you even doing here?"

"Oh. Remember the uh, that Christmas when I came home from London or whatever, because it was Christmas and I missed you, and uh," He's still wheezing a little, but looking decidedly more animated and crazy the longer he stands there for.

Shaking his head, Cook puts one hand on the door knob for leverage, and starts trying to close the door again.

"Yeah," He nods. "That was definitely the year before we split. Also on Christmas Eve."

He closes the door in David's face and doesn't think too much about it. Or tries not to, really.

 

.

 

Except that he totally does think about it and can't stop with the thinking about it.

 

.

 

As a standard, New York is usually pretty cold, Cook has come to realize over the years. New York is generally cold and slippery, and he pretty much finds it best to just stay inside, order lots of food, and gain about three hundred pounds between November and January, things that he will inevitably have to work off come the New Year.

Which is why it's decidedly surprising when he opens the front door for his Chinese delivery guy, and David is still sitting on his steps, teeth chattering unnervingly.

"You stupid ass," Cook says, which takes the delivery guy back a bit. David is blue around the lips and definitely not wearing enough layers to chill out in the snow until Cook feels alright enough to let him explain. Which may never actually happen.

David raises his eyebrows and tries to grin, but it mostly comes out as ch-ch-ch-ch, so Cook gives the delivery guy a twenty, and yanks David up by the back of his hood.

 

.

 

"Explain."

David is sitting on the middle cushion of Cook's living room couch, still shivering, just not as violently as he was before. Truth be told, Cook maybe doesn't even feel all that bad about it at all.

"Thanks for uh, rescuing me," David tells him, snugging the comforter Cook got off his bed up around his chin. Cook, standing on the other side of the coffee table, crosses his arms, and makes a face that says 'go now.' David frowns a half smile and then says, quietly, "I'm so sorry."

Cook raises his eyebrows and doesn't bother saying anything. Just stands there quietly, shoulders tense, with all the hair on one side of his head flat against his skull.

"Okay, well, um," One of David's hands sneak out of the blanket to scratch at the back of his head, damp from the hot shower Cook let him have. "Basically, I was just in Toronto this morning, which is pretty cold, but not as cold as sitting outside by yourself for six hours, and, um." He makes another face and looks up at Cook. "And I realized that I really missed you a lot, like. Stomach ache a lot, stay in my bed all day by myself for maybe ever if you don't forgive me, a lot. And I canceled some stuff and got a flight down here, which almost got delayed because of some crazy snow storm, and..."

Feeling like he should have put some pants on, or at least a shirt, Cook says, "And you're fucking crazy! You probably have hypothermia."

"Yeah I might," David laughs, uneasily. He shifts around a bit more and tugs the blanket closer. "I can't really feel my toes."

Cook rolls his eyes but lowers his arms, at least, so he's left standing there with his bare chest, wearing a pair of black underwear with a rip in the hem. He feels like about a million bucks, of course.

"You're the biggest idiot I know sometimes," Cook finally says, just staring at him. "And that's saying a lot, man."

David sits quietly on the couch for a moment, before inhaling and saying in a way that makes Cook fight down a twitch of the lip, "You know, I'm okay with that."

 

\---

 

Christmas, 2013

_Well maybe I can just keep it for a little while, and just use it for small things, like, I dunno, when I've had a really shitty day or when I need someone to talk to. Or if I need someone to move something really heavy. And then eventually, I'll give it back to you when we both find someone new.  
Unfortunately, it won't work that way.  
Why not?  
Well, now that you have my heart, I'm pretty much an empty cavity inside, for lack of a better term, heartless. I will now treat each woman I meet with a passive aggressive contentiousness that will ruin relationship after relationship, for many years to come._

 

"Sorry, I just needed someone to talk to," Is the first thing David says, in one of his famous run on sentences that has Cook reeling as soon as he picks up the phone.

It's snowing, it's the night before Christmas Eve, and Cook has just fucked his girlfriend through the mattress. He is just about all holiday-ed out.

"Yeah, uh," Cook rubs a sleepy hand over his face, and tries to blink the sleep out of his eyes. "What's up? Where are you?"

Can't believe he's still this much of a sucker, even after all of these years.

 

.

 

"Look, all I'm saying is, if I wanted to get myself involved in anymore family drama, I'd marry one of the Kardashians," Cook tells her, from where he's bent over his laptop with a pair of studio headphones around his neck. He hasn't cleaned his living room in maybe a million years.

She's standing in her glittery holiday best, a pretty little black dress and expensive heels, filling up his entire doorway with her hair and red lipsticked frown.

"Dave, all I'm asking is that you come and meet my damn parents!" She snaps back at him, stomping her heel.

Tugging the headphones off, Cook adjusts the laptop, warm against his legs, and levels a stare at her. "Baby," He says, "I've dated a seventeen year old before. If I still wanted to bang a kid, I would."

"You're such an asshole sometimes," She snaps at him, crossing her arms. That's something Cook rarely hears about himself, and usually it's coming from jilted women, which doesn't really make him feel any better. "What does that even mean, that you're a total pervert?"

He throws his computer onto the couch cushions beside him and gets up out of the cushy fabric, straightening the elastic in his underwear as he steps over the coffee table and thinks about whether he wants coffee or the nog, as he affectionately calls it.

"All I'm saying is," He tells her, inching past her through the doorway. "Stop acting like a five year old who didn't get what she wanted."

She snaps on him, totally wigs out and throws her silver clutch at the back of his head.

So fifteen minutes later, he's sitting alone by himself on Christmas Eve, as usual, in his bathroom, on the closed toilet lid with a wad of tissue pressed against the back of his bleeding head. Which is new.

 

\---

 

Christmas, 2012

_[My heart.] For you.  
You do realize I'm breaking up with you, right?_

_That's the strange thing, it's actually yours now. I don't know why it works this way, but I'm never gonna get over you. And so from now on, every person that I meet will be meticulously compared to you, and unfortunately, none of them will be able to measure up to the false memory of what you and I once had._

 

Cook mails him a present, of course. Archie had sent him a card, it'd arrived weeks ago, almost halfway through December. He'd sat it on the kitchen counter, between his takeout menu bible and the phone book, and forgot about it, for the most part.

And he'd actually met someone over the summer, figured he'd give girls a whirl again. And she was nice, sorta. She didn't really understand why he was sending such an extravagant gift to an ex, but whatever. Cook never really totally got girls, anyway.

"So do you want chocolate mint, or gingerbread?" She asks him, standing in his newly leased, freshly painted kitchen. She's wearing a pair of ruffled boy shorts and one of his t-shirts, with a well loved cookbook in one hand, and her cell phone open on the counter.

He'd been hovering around the doorway for the better part of half an hour, silently judging, a pair of old sweatpants hanging grimly around his hips, a couple of loose chains around his neck. His hair is a mess, he knows.

"I could go for some sugar cookies," He says, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. She's got a hickey on the back of her neck.

Laughing, she flips the page over, two of which are stuck together and make a funny noise when they separate, and wrinkles her nose. "Oh sweetheart," She says over her shoulder, looking pouty. "I'm not your mama, I don't do sugar cookies."

Licking his bottom lip, he nods and shrugs and doesn't really say much else. Just stands there quietly, watching her shuffle through his kitchen drawers after she settles on a gingerbread recipe.

One time he tried to watch David make cookies, but they'd ended up covered in more flour than there was in the mixing bowl, instead.

 

.

 

She lasts another three weeks, and just after New Years, Cook meets some good looking guy at a bar, and takes him home because he's horny and more than a little drunk.

"Fuck, you're pretty hot," The guy breathes against his mouth, wriggling his hips until they're bone to bone with Cook's. They're about the same size, Cook exhales and accidentally bites down on the guy's lip, and gets a shiver and grind in return. The guy makes another noise, something that sounds a lot like, "Yeah."

Cook fucks him in the front hall of his apartment, face to the wallpaper, pants down around his ankles.

"What's your -- name?" Cook asks, halfway in and then halfway out again.

The guy laughs breathlessly, and makes a noise as he gets pushed back against the plaster. He starts jerking himself off.

"Doesn't matter," He answers, closing his eyes, pressing his forehead against the wall and his hips away from it.

Cook holds the base of the guy's spine with one hand, and thinks, you just don't move the way that he used to.

 

.

 

His brother sets him up with some chick for a bar crawl on Saint Paddy's Day, but they don't even make it out the front door.

"Not a chance," Cook says, standing in the kitchen with a glittery green top hat, a shirt that fits a bit too snug, and a new beer. "I don't do blondes."

 

\---

 

Christmas, 2011

_I need space, I need the time to just figure out who I am, you know? And it's not you, it's totally not you, it's me, and it's just the timing of it. I'm trying to find out who I am and I can't really do that if I'm trying to find out who you are at the same time, you know? I feel like we gave it a really good go, but it's just time to move on._

 

"I, seriously. I can't believe you're doing this on Christmas Eve," Cook says, and even now, he's trying to laugh a bit.

David is sitting opposite him. On the other side of their Christmas dinner, for fucks sake. And he looks all wide-eyed and seventeen again, and Cook cannot believe that this is what its all come down to. A breakup on the East Coast over shitty hotel food and excuses of it's not you, it's me.

"I know!" David jerks his hand so much that the whole table wiggles, and their cold room service turkey jiggles on the table between them. "I know, and... I know, but, I. I don't know, I thought I'd waited too long already, and you're gonna be gone all of January, and..."

Shaking his head, Cook gets up from the table without so much as an 'excuse me,' and shoves his chair back in, nearly catching David in the knee.

"Awesome," He says, to nobody in particular. Cause he's pretty sure nobody but David is listening. He looks up to where the ceiling meets the rest of the wall and blinks, end even though he's maybe seen this coming since the last time he thought about their relationship, he tries not to let it get out too fast. David is still sitting quietly at their dinner table when he turns around and asks, "Waited too long, like, what? A year?"

David's eyebrows both shoot up into his hairline and goddamn if he still isn't the nicest kid Cook has ever met.

"No! No," He insists, standing up, too, setting his clean napkin back onto the table. He looks as innocent and insistent as Cook has ever seen him. "It's just, I'm like, finally kind of figuring out who I am, and, and."

The stupidest thing about all of this was that his brother had always warned him that something like this would eventually go down. You're too old, and not in the way that matters, they'd say, you've just got too much life experience, and he needs to figure stuff out on his own. Cook used to say back, you don't know the kid that well, dude, if you knew him like I did, well, well.

You just called him a kid, Dave, they'd say, rolling their eyes. Scoffing.

And Cook never knew just what to say, after that.

 

\---

 

Christmas, 2010

"Judy Garland and Percy Sledge. Why does that totally make sense?"

David crosses both arms over his chest, damn near falling asleep right where he is, propped up against the arm of the couch. His eye lids feel about ten pounds heavier than they did last time he opened them as he blinks slowly, watching Cook stand there, shuffling through his 'favorites' holiday playlist.

"Hey, what's wrong with Judy Garland?" David asks, voice twice deep as usual, thanks to the sleep rattling around his chest. Battling a New York snowstorm just to get home in time for Christmas Eve isn't as romantic as he'd originally made it out to seem. When he'd set foot over the stoop of their apartment door, Cook had been in the kitchen wearing his underwear as he sipped at a beer, and flipped through the coveted take out menu binder he'd been assembling over the years.

Cook laughs, and plays about fifteen seconds of Christmas Wish before losing interest and moving onto the next song.

"Nothing's wrong with Judy Garland," He says, standing there in his one size too small underwear, mostly empty beer still cooling in one hand. "I just wouldn't pick her and whats his name as my two favorite Christmas songs ever, is all."

Shrugging, David closes his eyes, and leans back into the sofa cushions a little more, warm and completely relaxed at the thought of just being home for once. With Cook here, he doesn't even miss his family all that much, really. Not as much as he could, at least, the sting of being away from home during the holidays has faded over the last few years. Most of them had been spent overseas, on album promotion or endless touring.

"Oh, well, I don't care," David answers, eyes still closed. He hears Cook snicker, then the song changes again. "I like Judy Garland. And Percy Sledge, actually."

Then there's a moment where David thinks he might've actually drifted off for all of a few minutes. When he manages to get his eyes back open again, Cook is standing right beside him with a big stupid toothy grin stretched across his face.

"Man, I think I might be in love with Dean Martin. He's like, Mr. Christmas," Cook tells him, bending down to rest his beer on the coffee table. Right beside his empty takeout carton, and David's passport. Cook almost spills his beer all over the aforementioned means of identification when he shoves it all to the side with one hand so he can sit down against the edge of the table. "Dean Martin and Rosemary Clooney, Mr. and Mrs. Christmas."

When he realizes the actual law of physics of managing to cram himself onto the coffee table, Cook switches gears and angles for the couch instead. David shuffles as much of himself as he can get against the back of the couch, mostly only because David knows Cook'll sit down whether there's actually room enough for him or not.

"Perry Como is Mr. Christmas," David argues quietly, eyes drifting back closed as Cook settles in beside him. He feels one of Cook's hands come to rest against his hip.

There's a little bit of a shuffle for a moment, but then Cook leans over and rests the side of his head against David's belly, cold seeping through the light fabric of his hoodie, still not warmed up from being outside.

"Whatever," He says, not unkindly. He rolls his chin against David's belly, and looks up until David looks back down at him. "Thanks for coming home."


End file.
